Development & Aid, Headlines, Human Rights, Latin America & the Caribbean, Poverty & SDGs

ARGENTINA: Rosario, a Child-Friendly City

Marcela Valente

ROSARIO, Argentina, Apr 12 2006 (IPS) - Children in one of Argentina’s biggest cities have been blazing a trail in urban management for the past 10 years. Their participation in government has resulted, for instance, in more green areas, riverside benches, and theme parks that are a magnet for tourists.

“The aim is for girls and boys to participate actively in municipal government, discussing their problems and needs, proposing measures and pointing out the things that need to be changed,” Leandra Bonofiglio, coordinator of the Children’s City Programme in Rosario, explained to IPS.

The project was inspired by the recommendations of Francesco Tonucci, an Italian pedagogue, who calls for the creation of “child-friendly cities” by incorporating children as advisers in urban planning and management.

The United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) spread the idea to Argentina, where it was adopted in 1996 by the city of Rosario in the eastern province of Santa Fe. The city has a population of 1.1 million, making it the third largest in the country after Buenos Aires and Córdoba.

Three years later, Rosario received a “City of Peace” award from the U.N. Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation (UNESCO).

In 2002, the city also won a prize from the Pan American Health Organisation (PAHO), for hospital management, and in 2003 it was chosen by the U.N. Development Programme (UNDP) from 257 candidate cities for an award considering it a model of “successful local governance and development in Latin America.”

Rosario hosted the Third International Congress of the Spanish Language, and has recently been designated the Latin American headquarters of the network of “Children’s Cities” which is expanding throughout the world. Rosario’s city government, which has been led by Socialist Party mayors since 1991, now advises and trains officials in other cities in Argentina and throughout Latin America on how to involve children.

The key to this practice is the Children’s Councils. Public and private primary schools elect a representative from fourth and fifth grades – children aged nine or 10 û for each of the six districts into which the city is divided.

The roughly 180 children’s representatives sit on the district councils that meet once a week to deliberate on the problems of their neighbourhoods and make proposals, for a term of two years.

It was their idea, for example, to “plant benches” on sidewalks and in green areas, many of them facing the Paraná River – one of the largest rivers in the country – “so that grown-ups can sit and watch us play.”

The suggestion arose from a discussion on urban safety. One of the children commented that he felt safer in the street when his grandmother sat on a stool in the doorway and watched him at play, Bonofiglio said. “In order to feel safer, children didn’t ask for more police, but for more adults to watch and protect them,” she emphasised.

Another project that emerged from one of the council meetings was to improve green spaces in the poorest neighbourhoods. The children complained that their play areas looked like vacant lots. Now, however, they are like small parks, with well-maintained playground equipment and benches, and football goalposts in some cases.

A group of teenage “former councillors” continues to make suggestions through a local radio station, a youth office, and small travelling fairs with rides in public places.

The city participated in UNICEF’s “International Children’s Day of Broadcasting” with radio and television programmes involving children. It has also instituted an “Annual Day for Playing and Living Together,” celebrated in the streets on the first Wednesday of October. Thousands of local residents from every district join in the festival every year.

To make the dreams of children, teenagers and young people a reality, an intergovernmental commission was created, made up of representatives from all of the secretariats of the local government. “The project has generated a whole new policy for children in this city,” said Bonofiglio, who coordinates all of the efforts.

The city now looks clean, with properly equipped public bathrooms and many wastebins lined with plastic bags. This was another demand from the children, who claimed their “right to beauty.” On the banks of the Paraná River, there are bathing beaches with resort facilities, places set aside for watersports, municipal swimming pools and economically priced eating places.

The city dwellers have taken charge of their public spaces, and are preserving monuments, landscapes and installations to a greater extent, Bonofiglio said. “The new citizen attitude is being built by means of the Children’s Councils, which are a valuable instrument for guiding government action,” she added.

“Ten years ago, this city had its back to the river. Now it has turned round to face it, and that attracts many tourists,” she remarked. There are free open-air rock concerts, given by bands that are popular nationwide and abroad, like “Ataque 77”, which are held in the early evening, by the river. Whole families come, and dance and sing into the night.

“The bridge has also helped a great deal,” said Bonofiglio, referring to the 60 kilometres of highways, cable-stayed bridges and viaducts that unite Rosario with Victoria, in the neighbouring province of Entre Ríos, on the other side of the Paraná River. The cement construction crosses the river and its delta of islands and waterways, 300 kilometres northeast of Buenos Aires.

The inauguration of the roadlink opened up a route to Rosario for Argentines living east of the Paraná River, and for Uruguayans and Brazilians as well.

But undoubtedly the main attraction for younger visitors is the new theme parks, another of the children’s ideas: the Children’s Farm, the Children’s Garden and the Island of Inventions, located in different parts of the city.

Entrance tickets cost between 1.00-2.00 pesos (0.32-0.65 dollars), but access is free for schools and for those who cannot afford it. There are no private advertising sponsors for the parks, and no sales of food, beverages or souvenirs on the grounds; only natural surroundings, benches, games, bathrooms and drinking fountains.

At the Children’s Garden there are giant replicas of several of Leonarda Da Vinci’s inventions, such as his flying and dream machines, and ladders for climbing castle walls. Each child is equipped with a safety helmet, and the coordinators of the games are university students who have been trained to lead the activities.

The park also has a covered building with different play areas for the smallest children, each of them expressing the worldview of a famous painter.

For its part, the Island of Inventions is conceived as a space for creativity, with games, costumes, and workshops for making toys, clothes and recycled paper, as well as visual arts and journalism workshops. At all of these, the children can play, and adults join in alongside them.